'Submission' author Amy Waldman to speak March 22

Former Times reporter discusses debut novel

Mar 13, 2012
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Article by: Erica Blust

Amy Waldman

Amy Waldman, author of the acclaimed novel “The Submission” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), which tells the story of a competition to design a memorial for the victims of a terrorist attack and of the American Muslim who wins it, will speak at Syracuse University on Thursday, March 22, at 6 p.m. as part of the lecture series “Memory and Commemoration, as Fact or Fiction.”

The talk will be held in Watson Theater, Menschel Media Center, 316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse, and is free and open to the public. Parking for the public is available for $4 in Booth Garage; parking in Booth is free for SU students, faculty and staff with a valid SU parking permit.

Waldman was a reporter for the New York Times for eight years, including three as co-chief of the New Delhi bureau. She was also a national correspondent for the Atlantic. “The Submission” is her first novel. It was named a New York Times Notable Book for 2011; one of National Public Radio’s Ten Best Novels; Esquire‘s Book of the Year; Entertainment Weekly‘s No. 1 Novel for the Year; a Washington Post Notable Fiction Book; and one of Amazon’s Top 100 Books and top 10 debut fiction. It was a finalist for the Guardian (UK) First Book Award.

Waldman’s fiction also has appeared in the Atlantic, the Boston Review and the Financial Times and was anthologized in “The Best American Non-Required Reading 2010” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). She graduated from Yale University and has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and at the American Academy in Berlin.